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Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

Here's the thing: You probably disagree and even loathe the personal politics of many of the artists whose works you enjoy, be it writing, paintings music, games, etc. If you go down the road of selecting works based on a merit outside of the work itself, then you will spend more of your time researching people than ever experiencing a work.

My view is that as long as the work itself does not reinforce terrible positions on issues social or otherwise, then the work should probably be evaluated in a vacuum.

Otherwise, you'll probably go insane.

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I agree that doing a bunch of research to decide whether or not you agree with an author before reading his works is silly, but at the same time, if you are made aware of them, there's nothing wrong with letting that determine whether or not you want to support the person by purchasing their works.

In the case of Card, he unfortunately has put his position in some of the books. It can be rather subtle, but there was definitely an example of it in Ender's Shadow.

> Here's the thing: You probably disagree and even loathe the personal politics of many of the artists whose works you enjoy

The thing that is most infuriating about OSC is that his stories imply a philosophy completely opposite those he espouses in his political writings.

For example, one of my favorite short stories is OSC's Unaccompanied Sonata. The story has a message about the cruelty and ultimate impossibility of making someone deny their core self.

http://janlowman.escuelacampoalegre.wikispaces.net/file/view...

But then in real life, OSC says stuff like gay people already have marriage rights because they can get married, just not to their own sex. How can the guy who wrote the above story think something like that? Like I said, it's infuriating.

What is your response to this point though? I don't see how it is anything but completely valid; the point is that there is no objectively defined action that is prohibited for one group and allowed for another, so the "equal rights" argument is a canard. Perhaps there are other arguments to be made, I certainly don't want to get into that here, I am simply responding to your feeling that this is an infuriating thing to say.

Would you have accepted this as a valid argument back when anti-miscegenation laws were in effect?

"There's no issue, black and white people can get married. Just not to each other."

I also wonder how OSC would argue against changing the law so that ONLY homosexual marriage was legal. By his argument, he should have no problem, since he would still have marriage rights, only to another man.

> your feeling that this is an infuriating thing to say.

It's infuriating in light of the subtext of the linked story, which is that ultimately you can't deny your true self. When he makes an argument that gays have rights if only they would deny their true selves... Arg!

Well, yes and no. I think it's true that a simple inequality argument likewise doesn't apply in the case of anti-miscegenation laws. However these laws denied individuals a natural right for no good reason and were therefore immoral and illegitimate.

How to establish the natural right though? Fairly easy in the case of mixed race marriages-- No one at the time thought marriage between the races was impossible or unthinkable, they just didn't want it to happen. That's why they wrote laws against it. And note even that the history of such laws is rather skimpy![1] The overwhelming majority of human history attests to the possibility of the free mixture of races.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws

Thank you.

It's not just authors, any time you make a transaction you risk pushing money in a "bad" direction. In many cases worse than somebody just having an opinion but actual bad stuff happening.

For example if you are strongly anti-war it could be argued that you should quit your job and start claiming as much welfare as possible to try and deny the government funds for buying weapons, if you pay tax you are literally funding war.

I didn't have to do research, it was at the back of my head, I recall reading his shitty essay some time ago.

With the facts at hand, I can make a decision without going insane. :)

Still, his point that creative works should be viewed in a vacuum holds merit. If the work itself doesn't express something you disagree with, then there is no reason to rail against it.

Our creative works can be better than we are.

It's a question of supporting and finance of something you dislike. I am not saying Enders Game does not stand for its own merits.

Right, but if you want to avoid a certain level of hypocrisy, blindly consuming works from content creators whose views you do not know is at odds with actively blocking one simply because you do not agree with his views on a subject which is external to the work itself.

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